


leave the war behind

by salazarastark



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-02 12:19:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18810778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salazarastark/pseuds/salazarastark
Summary: A soul for a soul, and then a soul's return.





	leave the war behind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Silvereye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvereye/gifts).



> Betaed by the lovely tuesday.

One moment, Natasha is falling towards her death, eyes on Clint’s anguished face, and the next moment, she’s choking up water and waking up in Steve’s arms. He’s gathering her close, and Natasha shakes in his arms.

She doesn’t know what’s going on - she doesn’t know what has brought her back - but she clasps her hands behind his neck and buries her head in the curve of his neck. She clings to Steve and listens to low, soothing words.

She’s alive.

Somehow, despite it all, she’s alive.

*

“What’s going to happen?” she asks as Steve helps her up. She is cold and tired and wet and  _ alive _ . Incredibly, miraculously alive. She looks at him. “What did happen?”

“We won, Nat,” Steve chokes out, still holding her close. “We got back everyone.”

Natasha feels the joy and relief of knowing settle upon her until she catches Steve’s eyes quickly look down, the tightening of his mouth. Her mouth dries and her eyes water, but she forces the next words out.

“Who did we lose?”

Steve doesn’t answer, and she forces the words out again.

“Steve, who did we  _ lose _ ?”

Images flash through her mind of her teammates, broken and pale and bloody, eyes open and unseeing. She hadn’t wanted anyone to die - other than her.

(That’s a lie, she didn’t want to die, but it was either her or Clint, and it could never be Clint.)

He looks up at her, pain and grief evident. 

“Tony.”

The name is like a punch in Natasha’s gut, physically rocking her back a step. Her breath is caught in her throat, and her vision blurs with her tears.

“No,” she whispers. Tony can’t be dead. There can’t be a world without Tony Stark. There can’t be a world where Morgan grows up without her father.

“I’m sorry, Nat,” she hears Steve say, and her head snaps towards him. She straightens her back, forces the tears out of her eyes, and turns to face him. “Who else?”

Steve lists off names of Wakandan soldiers, sorcerers, and Ravagers, people Natasha never knew but still died in the name of her cause,  _ their _ cause.

She feels terrible at how relieved she is that she didn’t know anyone else on that list.

She nods as he finishes the names, and there must be something in her expression as he stares at her.

“Nat, are you okay?”

She came back to life; she should be okay. She was dead; she has a right not to be. She’s woken up to a world remarkably changed from the one she left. She had a friend who was alive; now he’s not.

She wants to snap at Steve, ask if he really thinks she’s okay, but she looks at him closer. No, out of everyone, Steve understands what’s she’s going through more than most ever could. He knows she isn’t okay, but he doesn’t know what else to ask.

But she knows he’ll accept her answer.

“No.”

*

They struggle out of the lake. Steve has to support her, and Natasha knows they could jump back to the present, but right now, she feels too weak to jump through time and space. She’s moving like a newborn colt, and as soon as they get to the edge, Natasha falls to the ground, palms flat and stinging when they hit. She takes a ragged breath in, then rolls over on her back. Steve is sitting down, leaning against a rock, wide-eyed as he looks across the lake they had just trekked through.

“I was going to go back to Peggy,” Steve says, and Natasha’s brow furrows.

“What?” she croaks out. “How? Why?”

Steve shrugs. “I don’t know. I was just thinking . . . I was just thinking about how much I missed her. I missed my life. Going through all of this, losing half the people I loved for  _ five years _ , and then losing you and Tony? I just . . . I just wanted to go back to a simpler time.”

He looks down at his hands, gives a twisted smile. “I wasn’t really thinking it through.”

“No. You weren’t.”

Steve gives a short bark of a life that turns into a choked sob half-way through. He looks at her with eyes that are too bright. “God, I missed you, Nat.”

Natasha’s heart hurts at those words.

She remembers seeing him as she fell to the bottom of the cliff, remembers wishing they could talk one more time.

She missed him, too.

“Are you still going to go back?”

He shakes his head. “No, I’m staying here. Well, not  _ here _ , but I’m staying with you, with everyone else in our time.”

The relief floods Natasha. She doesn’t want to lose Steve.

She doesn’t want Steve to lose himself.

But the reminder of time sends a spike of fear though Natasha, and she instantly searches for her device. Hopefully it will still work. Hopefully she won’t be stuck in 2014. She’s not afraid of being alone - she doesn’t doubt for a second that Steve won’t stay with her for the next nine years - but they would be stuck in time, unable to do anything without risking a change to the timeline.

It’s still there, on her wrist, and looks to be in perfect working condition.

“I asked Hank Pym before I returned, just in case you came back. He said that as long as the device isn’t damaged, you should be able to return to 2023 with me.”

She nods. “Let’s go, then.”

*

She still needs his support when they return back to the present day. He has an arm wrapped around her, pulling her close as she leans into his side, eyes closing as exhaustion starts to overcome her.

It’s tiring, coming back to life.

She’s almost asleep when they land on the pad. She hears a torn, “Nat,” from Bruce, hears jumbled words from Sam and Bucky. She should fall back on her training, she should record everything that’s being said, but she knows that she doesn’t have to.

She’s safe right here as she finally drops off in Steve’s warm embrace.

*

She wakes up in a hospital room with Steve sleeping in the chair next to her bed. Her eyes are gritty, her mouth is dry, and she feels like death until she remembers that she  _ was _ dead.

She can’t blame Steve for his alarm when he wakes up to her hysterical laughter.

She looks at his wide eyes, his open mouth, and it just makes her laugh harder.

There are honestly a lot of questions she could ask him. A lot of things she could say. The only thing that comes out of her mouth is, “Do you remember the nothing?”

She’s still laughing, despite her horror at her own words. And it’s a lie. She has flashes of  _ something _ in the meantime. 

A woman with green skin and a kind smile. 

A woman with her red hair next to a man with her green eyes.

Tony’s laugh.

And Steve didn’t die like her, he just . . .

“I remember the cold.”

Disappeared.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, choking down her laughter that still threatens to bubble up. “I’m sorry this happened to us. To all of us.”

“Me too,” he whispers, his hand tightening around her shoulder, and she turns her head, lays her cheek upon the back of his hand.

“I just want to rest,” she whispers. Her mind feels stretched, spread too thin. “I didn’t want to die, but I just wanted some rest.”

Vaguely, she wonders how nice the drugs she must have been given are to make her so honest. Or maybe it’s just Steve.

“I know,” he tells her, and she believes him. The understanding of why he wanted to return to 1945 hits her like a bolt of lightning. It’s easier to rest in the one place you still knew peace.

“Don’t know what to do now,” she admits, and he nods.

“Me, either. There’s always been another fight.”

And it’s scary how scary that thought is. Both of them were born in war, and she knows they both thought they would die in it.

“I think we just have to find a new one,” he continues. “There are a lot of people who are missing five years of life. They need someone to make sure they learn everything they’ve missed.”

She nods. “A lot of people who need to find their family. A lot of people who need to reclaim their lives.”

He smiles at her, and she smiles back, their eyes alight as they start planning the future, start planning everything that needs to be done.

There’s always going to be another fight, and they’re always going to find it, but maybe they can leave the war behind.


End file.
